The production design is absolutely gorgeous. When they get to the Emerald City and the doors open to reveal an honest-to-goodness set built inside of a soundstage, instead of some big CGI city stretching off into the distance—perfection.
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Having said that everything from the Emerald City onwards is a bit of a whiff sadly. The cameos from Chenoweth/Menzel are EGREGIOUS, Jeff Goldblum is sleepwalking through his scenes as the Wizard, and there's that awful bit of guff with the hot air balloon that wastes a few minutes of screentime.
And it's so annoying how they chose to break up the flow of Defying Gravity to cram in that "profound" moment of Elphaba reaching out to her child self, completely killing the momentum of the music right when it's supposed to be building to an explosive finale.
In general, the new additions to the script were redundant and bad. Elphaba doesn't need a bear nanny to give her a personal stake in animal rights—she has Doctor Dillamond. We don't need a new song to explain the Grimmerie—it just is. I don't need to know why the bloody yellow brick road is yellow!
BUT despite these gripes, the movie works as a whole. My expectations were low and have been exceeded by far. I'm thinking we're back??? Musicals on the big screen baby yeehaw.
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